g Arthur's Court, yet didn't pull it off for a nanosecond. Even before he sat down, he waved his hands across the table where our plates and drinks and ashtrays were, as if they were in his way and he wanted us to clear them so he could settle in. Then he began to complain about the ashtrays that had butts in them (imagine that)--"What sort of place is this, can't even have a clean ashtray..."It took a grand total of two seconds for me to respond. I picked up one of them and dumped it into the other and set down the empty one in front of him. "There you go," I said.
I immediately disliked him. There's never much doubt--nine times out of ten when a man invites himself to sit near you, he's after more than your witty repartee. The strange part is, he thought he was the most lucid, engaging, and charming member of the intelligentsia. What he was, was weird, rude, presumptuous, obnoxious, ridiculous and pathetic. He was sitting in the sofa that had it's back to Shannon and Walter, and so he had to crane his neck around to respond to them. But meanwhile, he jerked and bobbed his head and broke into song. When they would pause between songs, he would obligingly fill the void with a Pavorotti-esgue rendition of something, complete with hand gestures, and a thick operatic accent--sometimes in some indecipherable language which he tried to pass off as German, but was really Pompous fakery.
We tried to ignore him. But then he began to badger the waitress about his drink, the table, the ashtrays, his glass, and anything else. We were both bristling by this time, because she was trying her best to be tolerant of his behavior, and was met only with his holier-than-thou abrasiveness. It seemed to make him feel empowered somehow, and he was looking for some twisted, adoring response from the females in his company--uninvited though his presence was.
Shannon and Walter just looked on in wonder while he monopolized the silence between songs, periodically shouting something earth-shatteringly pertinent in their direction. He reminded me of a compunded version of that young man one night at Shug's, who sat in the front, stood by the table, almost facing everyone, his foot hiked up on his chair, and singing along with Shannon and Walter like he was a cast-member in Guys and Dolls. Only that guy was innocuous, whereas this guy at Grumpy's was like a barfly Frankenstein version of the same creature. When he asked, "Where is the restroom in this establishment?" I gave him a dry look, and shrugged. I was trying to be so obvoiously uninterested in assisting him in any way, that he would slither in some other direction. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.When he stood to announce his temporary departure, ("Will you ladies excuse me for a moment?") pausing as if to gain our full attention and coy "but-of-courses"-- I instead looked right past him toward Shannon and Walter, giving him absolutely no acknowledgement. After he was gone, I told Tammy I was losing my tolerance in a swift fashion. She said she was pretty sick of him, too, and entreated me to let her "handle it."
Well, this was a shock, since Tam is notoriously tolerant and sometimes overly-concerned with appearances and tactfulness. I didn't quite believe her, but I told her okay, but that I was not responsible for any unexpected stimuli that might make me take his head off before she'd worked out her rebuttal to him. To punctuate my declaration, I promptly leaned over and thumbed the ash from my cigarette into his drink.He returned (damn the luck) and then the waitress arrived again to serve yet another one of his requests. He was drunk, and the bartender wanted to cut him off, and he didn't like that at all. He insisted she bring him a drink, and in the big kind of mug like the one Tammy had tea in. He made a big production of it, and then insisted she empty the solitary cigarette butt from his ashtray and wipe his table down. She whirled and went to get him another glass.
I guess he didn't care for the looks we shot at him, because he began to justify his rudeness: "When I ask for something, I expect to get what I I ask for."
Tammy said, "You get what you deserve."
He mouthed off again, and she said, "You know what? You're being a jerk."
That made him mad, and he started flinging drunken aspersions and opinions again. I finally had had enough. I leaned forward and said, "Why don't you just go away?"
He continued his tirade. I kept repeating, "We do not want you here, don't you get it? We're not interested in your company. You're a jerk, and we're disgusted by you. Go away!"
He said, "make me." Wasn't that intelligent? He sounded like a grade school brat. I got up and went up to the bar to ask the manager to remove him for harassing us. They were ready to, anyway. He's been inflicting himself all over the bar all night.
So when the waitress came back while we were shouting at him, and had to deal with more of his attitude, she invited him to speak to the manager, who was going to toss him out by that time. He marched up to the bar, and while he was gone, I grabbed his cigarettes and bent the pack, breaking all the remaining cigarettes inside. I guess that was silly, but it sure made me feel good.
After he had gone, I couldn't resist a jibe at Tam's uncharacteristic indignance. I leaned over to her and said, "Do I detect the sound of growing testicles?"
